Energy Efficiency Standards for Refrigeration Productrs and Office Equipement

During the last 40 years, industry and nongovermental organizations have focused on methods of reducing energy consumption and environmental pollution.

The results consisted in adopting specific policies and measures by many well-developed countries (USA, Japan, Canada, UK, Australia, EU).

Nowadays every human action has an environmental impact. Energy consumption is one of the important polluting sectors, mainly due to the greenhouse gas emissions. That is the reason why governments and environmental organizations set up standards or voluntary measures in order to reduce pollution.

In 1998, Annex I Expert Group on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change elaborated a series of 18 studies about “Policies and Measures for Possible Action”. The work showed that common actions for harmonizing standards and test protocols would determine a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions, a potential reduction in trade distortions between countries, wider availability of cheaper and more efficient products.

It is very interesting the sector treated in “Energy Efficiency Standards for Traded Products”, Working Paper No.5,which draws attention about the two major consumption sectors that offers a large potential for further improvements in energy efficiency. The project includes a series of studies on the environmental and economic effect of applying different standards scenarios for refrigerators/freezers products and office equipment.

Refrigeration has been for the last 10 years ago the largest domestic sector electricity end–use (20% of domestic electricity consumption). The study takes into consideration the different regional starting points, policies, products, consumer habits, and so the conclusions are drown for several geographical regions (North America, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States and Japan).

The study considered three different scenarios: a base case scenario (shows the efficiency improvement that would result due to product impact on market), an “introductory standard” (shows the environmental improvements that can be achieved if implementing minimum energy performance standards) and a “more rigorous standard” (implements standards at highest levels).

The workpaper conclusions for all regions can be seen on the graphic above.

Combined CO₂ emissions scenario for refrigerator/freezers for all Annex I regions

The economic effects are analyzed from the consumers and industry’s point of view.

For the consumer the cost of conserved energy (CCE) evaluates the profitableness of investing in new refrigeration technologies, with lower energy consumption. The investment in such products appears to be rationale in countries where CCE is lower than the energy price.

The authors point out that regions like Southern Asia, Central Europe, South America increase the energy consumption in the proximate future as economical problems are surpassed; and so here by implementing introductory standards can achieve a very important gas emissions reductions (up to 45%).

For the industry, the common action to adopt product standards can have different effects. It is estimated that in UE there would be no sensible growing of refrigerators/freezers costs, as the manufactures would choose rather to reduce profit margins than to lose a segment of market. That is not the case of developing countries where new methods, implies a new technology, new investments costs. These costs would immediately reflect in products prices which would fastly grow.

Another interesting energy consumption sector is that of office equipment. This sector consumes nearly 80 TWh/year of electricity in OECD countries and it is the fastest growing electrical load in the commercial sector ( now represents 5 to 20 % of commercial electricity consumption).

This sector contains products with similar characteristics al over the world. Here the “ base case scenario” assumes that today’s technology is used to the year 2010. The “ introductory standard” scenario considers that by the and of 2000 US Energy Star Standard is to be implemented in each region ( which it is). “The more rigorous standards” assumes that the actual Swiss and Danish standards will replace Energy Star Standards.

Because many products (PC’s, monitors, photocopiers, printers, fax machines) are already build according to the Energy Star Efficiency, Annex I Expert Group underlines the necessity of acknowledging Energy Star futures (using standby and power down features for personal computers, auto-off and greater use of duplexing for copiers).

They point out that energy consumption of this sector is proportionally with IT equipment density in offices and with available commercial floor space. The effects of office equipment standards on CO₂ emissions reduction can be seen below.

The cost of the conserved energy has not been estimated. Some of more advanced energy efficient products have considerably higher prices than the common Energy Star equipment, but significant cost and price increases are not expected.

There can be various ways to implement these standards:

• Option I sets as target cost effective energy level

• Option II considers harmonization of test protocols and measurement techniques in order to the manufacturers to expend on more than one market.

• Option III requires the implementation of minimum energy performance level, and is the best option of all, as there can be achieved significant greenhouse gas emissions and additional trade benefits if countries adopted the same energy efficiency standard.

Romania is a country where legislation requires little effort from the manufactures to achieve minimum energy efficiency level, but it does a lot of effort to adopt UE main characteristics of legislation. Here standards are voluntary applied, and legislation efforts are made to implement minimum energy efficiency levels.

Implementing new standards in this country would significant effect CO₂ emissions but also the cost and prices for the products as romanian manufactures have old production line that need to be change in order to be able to respect these standards.